Is there A Penalty For Duplicate Content?
The top questions before you copy-and-paste your old PLRs into your blog and click "Publish" are:
- Will this PLR used somewhere (duplicate content)?
- If someone else is using the same PLR as I do, will I get penalized by Google? Will my site get banned/ get de-listed from Google?
- Can I rank high with PLR articles?
To answer these questions, I run a small test on my site.
First, I posted two SEO related articles titled "Avoid Unethical Practices in SEO" and "A Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research".
If you do a Google search, with " " (quote) and without " "(quote) for the first paragaph of these two posts, and you will see the search results as below:
Result A (Don’t bother to type it, click here to see result in Google)
Result B (Don’t bother to type it, click here to see result in Google)
Result C (Don’t bother to type it, click here to see result in Google)
Result D (Don’t bother to type it, click here to see result in Google)
Out of the four screenshots, I want you to pay special attention to the Result B and D where I used quote " " during the search.
For Result B, it means out of the tons of people who used the PLR articles "Avoid Unethical Practices in SEO", Google only recognized 3 websites.
For Result D, before you use the same logic to conclude Google recognized 159 sites, go to the bottom of the page and click on the last page,
Now, the Google shows 13 websites who are using the PLR articles "A Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research" and not the 159 sites.
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So, you might start to ask what is the criteria to be recognized by Google even if you are using PLR articles? How can I rank high even I am using the duplicate content?
Google has the answers for you.
Duplicate content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359
In this Google answer, it states:
Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked in robots.txt or with a noindex meta tag, we’ll choose one of them to list.In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.
In another Google articles,
Duplicated content due to scrapers
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html
it says:
…having duplicate content does not have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. It simply gets filtered out.
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Now, it boils down to the final key questions: how Google chooses? Which site will Google filter out?
From a series of testing I have done, I will recommend you to:
1. Keep your site Fresh!
Google loves fresh content to ensure its users have the best surfing experience, so fresh content sites get rewarded. If you decided to use PLR, mix it with your own written articles, don’t depends solely on the articles from the PLR pack you purchased. Because most likely others will do the same.
2. Use proper permanent link structure.
Look at how Google structures its link and do the same for your site. Here is an example:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html
Sometimes, you just load the PLR pack with strange title like
……duplicate–content–due–to–scrapers–350words–article.html
It will dampen the search results for sure.
3. Hold to Relevancy 
Make sure your PLR articles are related to the rest of the content of your blog/ website.
When I first started this blog, I have set up a section called Adware and Spyware. I used the whole pack of PLR articles to set up this section (without modification), even it is well structure in terms of inter-linking but none of the articles from this section was being recognized by Google after a year.
In other words, these articles are being filtered out because they are just irrelevant.
4. Use content with permission.
In Google terms, it is known as Syndicate carefully. If someone syndicates a content from your (or vice versa), make sure to include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.
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I hope you have enjoyed the post and it helps to clear some of your doubts on duplicate content. Feel free to comment.
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Impressive article post — even better research. Since I’m always preaching these same warnings, I’ve already sent a few of my clients over here to read this. Thanks for posting!
Great post! The Google duplicate content debate has gone on for so long it was finally nice to hear Google lay it to rest.
I would always recommend making a few changes to PLR articles to personalize them with your voice and style. I’ve also seen people leave negative comments on blogs where they have found the same content posted in the exact same way that they read it on another blog… denting the credibility of the blog author.
Great research by the way…
Karl
One Michelle Mcphearson of social media daily did a similar research, but by using mispelled keywords and wanted to see if the “no follow” indexing of links would affect her SERPS…and the answer?
Nope!!
This duplicate content nonsense was started by some so called Guru who did not want too much competition and wanted to keep everyone on the sidelines whilst they went ahead and milked the proverbial cash-cow… licking their chops etc…you get the picture.
Love this article, very concise and to the point.
Sad thing is, it’s a bit too late to try and sway people… those who know will make the money, and those who don’t will continue… well, sitting on the wayside.
Good posting.
Feelgood.
Great article and very informative test on duplicate content! Thanks for the info, it really gives me a clearer picture on the issue of duplicate content.
You are most welcomed! Rc.
very informative test on duplicate content.Thanks..The Google duplicate content debate has gone on for so long it was finally nice to hear Google lay it to rest.
very informative test on duplicate content.Thanks..”The Google duplicate content debate has gone on for so long it was finally nice to hear Google lay it to rest”.
Great article…Thanks for Google loves fresh content to ensure its users have the best surfing experience, so fresh content sites get rewarded. If you decided to use PLR, mix it with your own written articles, don’t depends solely on the articles from the PLR pack you purchased. Because most likely others will do the same...
Great article and very informative test on duplicate content..This duplicate content nonsense was started by some so called Guru who did not want too much competition and wanted to keep everyone on the sidelines whilst they went ahead and milked the proverbial cash-cow… licking their chops etc…you get the picture.
Good posting.
Diyet,
Thanks for your comment. : )
Thanks for the article.
thanks for information.
Somehow I am very glad I came across this blog when I did.
This debate about duplicate content is as old as the chicken and egg philosophy!
The guys at stomper swear you do not need to duplicate content, yet the news aggregators, aka the cnns and msnbc..you get the picture, all syndicate their news and yet they get indexed in a matter of minutes by google…
Something smells fishy here…
Whoever’s been spreading this rumor, sure seems to be smiling all the way to the bank, me thinks, but it’s good to note someone really cares and went to great lengths to produce this content.
A fantastic read….very literate and informative. Many thanks….what theme is this you are using and also, where is your RSS button ?
@Check my PageRank: Thank you. I am using plainscape theme. RSS button is under http://www.howtorankhigh.com/feed. (Why I have a feeling this sounds like a spam comment..)
You felt it was bogus because it was a spam comment.
I’ve learned to trust my gut instinct; then do a quick search just to make sure.
jb
@Top10: Thanks for the tips. It is indeed a spam comment. But let’s me keep it that way so my readers will know how a spam comment looks like.
This site my become feature Seo site because there is lot of good points with some research thanks for providing useful post